It’s (Mostly) Not FEMA’s Fault
The problems blamed on emergency managers are often caused by the shortcomings of other governmental bodies, both before and after disasters.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency doesn’t have a lot of fans.
By the time anyone comes in contact with FEMA, they’ve already been through a disaster. If FEMA’s work goes well, the agency tends to stay out of the spotlight. It’s only when things go wrong that FEMA’s name comes up, and then the agency tends to receive the blame.
Often ’s work often for , but the agency’s public-relations problems are often really the product of failures by other parts of government—at the state, local, and federal level—that are then left to be cleaned up by , Administrator Brock Long argued Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, hosted by the Aspen Institute and .
